Trump: Combat Partner or Fair-Weather Warrior?

Oh boy. Here’s what Donald Trump and his battalion of sycophants and inept politicos have not told us about Iran’s nuclear capabilities:

Buried underneath the underground nuclear site that Trump says he “obliterated” last June are some “18 to 20 scuba-tank-like canisters, each of which contains up to 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium, the main material for making a nuclear weapon.”

They are there for the taking, only to do so America or Israel would have to undertake a risky commando operation that surely would result in numerous casualties.  

America and Israel can bomb Iran back into the Stone Age but those uranium canisters would still be available to Iran or whomever digs them out. 

The end game for this war with Iran was to fully disable its ability to produce nuclear weapons. But as W.J. Hennigan and Massimo Calabresi pointed out in The New York Times, “If President Trump ends the war without getting control of the canisters, Iran will almost certainly speed toward going nuclear. Grabbing it, on the other hand, would entail huge risk and the inevitable deployment of American or Israeli ground forces (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/opinion/trump-iran-nuclear-weapons-enriched-uranium-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).

Capturing Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro was child’s play compared to the task facing Trump and Bibi Netanyahu. They have disrupted the global economy, initiated a regional conflict with casualties across multiple countries, and bottled up seafaring trade, air travel and oil production, all for naught if they fail to secure the uranium before the shooting stops. 

Prior military ventures with few American casualties have emboldened Trump’s feeling of invincibility. The question now is, does he have the fortitude to deploy ground troops that almost certainly will have members killed or injured? Is he ready to accept responsibility if the mission fails? Or has a high casualty rate? 

Israel is facing an existential threat. Netanyahu cannot risk leaving enriched uranium available to Iran or any other entity. Israel must be all-in on securing those canisters. 

Netanyahu will shortly find out if he has a true combat partner in Trump or a no risk fair-weather warrior. 

  

Everyone’s a Terrorist to Trump But Putin

To Donald Trump, anyone, any entity, that doesn’t agree with him is a terrorist, foreign or domestic. Maduro. Antifa. Renee Good. Alex Pretti. Ecuador. Iran. El Mencho. Congressional Democrats. Any entity but Putin.

He’s right about Iran. Under Islamic Republic leadership Iran sponsored terrorism. It cultivated and exported attacks within its borders and across the Middle East, South America, Europe and the United States. 

The hope is that under whatever new leadership emerges in Iran the world will be a safer place. That may be true when it pertains to Iran’s nuclear missile ambitions. But terror has many facets. State sponsored or by lone actors. Bombings. Attacks by guns, swords and knives. Chemical warfare. Technology disruptions. 

No doubt, millions among Iran’s population adhered to the extreme vision of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so it will be difficult, to say the least, to expect new leadership to be conciliatory towards Trump’s vision of a pliant Iran. Anyone Trump finds acceptable will automatically be suspect to a vast segment of Iran’s 90 million residents. Iran will be a shell of itself but still committed to extreme Islamic values.

Trump does not want an “endless war” with American troops occupying Iran. But he is no student of history if he believes Iran can self-police its conversion to a non-belligerent trusted state. Allied troops were needed for years on the ground to rehabilitate Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan after World War II. 

Trump is finding out it is a lot easier to give the order to shoot than to deal with the aftermath of his carnage. Without boots on the ground to prop up a more moderate government that has no guarantee of enduring a la our experiences in South Vietnam and Afghanistan, Trump merely has given Israel more security in the short term. A worthy benefit, but one that may well leave America vulnerable because our ordinance reserves may be severely depleted. 

We really should be arming Ukraine with the firepower to thwart Russia’s illegal land grab. Putin has spun Trump around like a marionette on a string. Trump can easily display American military might in Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador and Iran, but he dares not stare down Putin by appropriately arming Ukraine. 

An unchecked Russia is a true and real terror to Europe and the United States. 

A Purim Surprise For Iran

 

Whatever one thinks about the joint American-Israeli war on Iran, the timing could not have been more mystical. 

The timing was not lost on anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of Jewish history, the Bible and the Talmudic imperative, "If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” 

Purim begins Monday night, just days after the joint Israeli-American attack began. Jews celebrate Purim as a triumph over evil conceived by the imperial officer Haman to annihilate them throughout the ancient Persian empire. 

Jews have lived in Persia, modern day Iran, for some 2,600 years, ever since their first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE (before the common era) by the Babylonians who exiled them to modern day Iraq and eastward to Persia. 

Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians in 539 BCE. Cyrus permitted Jews to return to Jerusalem. Many did. The majority remained in Persia and Babylon for the next 2,500 years until Iraq and Iran responded to the creation of the State of Israel and Islamic extremism by forcing all but a few remnants of their respective Jewish communities to emigrate, mostly to Israel.

At one time Iran had strong relations with Israel. After the shah was replaced by the Islamic Republic, Jews and Israel became Iran’s enemies.

Recent Jewish holidays have not been strictly moments of religious reflection and joy. Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur War on October 6, 1973, Judaism’s holiest day. Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, came on Simchat Torah, the day Jews celebrate the completion and the start of a new annual reading of the Five Books of Moses. 

Trump’s wars have been marked by flashpoints of military prowess followed by unplanned, unknown aftereffects. In Venezuela, regime change was not a priority beyond capturing Nicolas Maduro. Trump had secretly courted Nicolas Maduro’s vice president to succeed him, leaving the impression that he just wanted Maduro out and assurances America would get access to the country’s oil. Instituting democracy was not top of mind. Trump is not a champion of democracy, at home or abroad, as his cozying up to autocrats abroad and his denigration of American election integrity have amply displayed. 

Trump’s comments after his Irani adventure have waffled as to expectations of whom will replace the decapitated Irani leadership. His picks were thwarted by Israel’s success in killing most of Iran’s leadership in the opening minutes of the air campaign. 

So now he envisions a four to five weeks long air assault with as yet no plans for boots on the ground. Has he reached agreement with Israel on the type of Irani leader acceptable to both combat partners? Who knows? Is he prepared for weeks, months or a longer disruption of Persian Gulf oil supplies? Who knows? Is Trump ready for body bags to come home encasing American airmen? Well, we know he said combat deaths were inevitable. How large is America’s tolerance of casualties before dissent ripples through the heartland?

Extremism—political and religious—are here to stay, in the U.S., Israel, Europe and the Middle East. No one can predict when Israel will confront the next Haman bent on its destruction, when it will be forced to “rise up and kill” first. But it surely, sadly, will come to pass. 

For America, existential threats are to be found in Russia and China, if their leaderships so choose. But disaster is far from a realistic certainty. 

Iran has been a rogue state for decades, leading many Western countries and Sunni Moslem states to support the attack. Domestically, Trump faces negative feedback for failing to seek congressional approval for initiating what clearly is a war, as required by the Constitution. Few legislators will be crying tears for the Irani leadership killed, but another embrace of an imperial presidency has many worried about our slide away from representative democratic government.

Yet another example of our race toward degeneracy is news that fortunes have been made on betting sites, especially one affiliated with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., predicting when war would break out and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be killed. 

Through a lottery (a “pur”) Haman chose the date Jews would be massacred throughout Persia. How ironic that betting on a date came full circle for Khamenei (https://www.npr.org/2026/03/01/nx-s1-5731568/polymarket-trade-iran-supreme-leader-killing).